Playing games

In which I try to get the crazy gang to play doctors so I can lie down, but fail.

I have spent the weekend feeling guilty and trying to make recompense for not being able to be in two places at once, namely playing hotels with bonkers and big girl daughters and playing cards/computer games/talking about the world with rebel daughter. On Saturday afternoon, despite my eyes rapidly closing, I played hotels and Pizza Hut with the smallest members of the family. I had suggested doctors, my favourite game if I get to be the patient who lies down. However, this was cruelly rejected. Instead I managed to mentiong to the hotel manager that I was pregnant and needed a midwife to take my blood pressure so had to lie down. This kind of backfired as bonkers daughter enthusiastically set about listening to my tummy with the stethoscope and shouting down by throat [she thinks this is how the baby hears]. On Sunday, I made the crazy gang some passports and we went on holiday. I got to be stewardess, which seemed to involve making a whole lot of food which I don’t recall being on offer on Easyjet. To make up for it, I had a couple of card games with rebel daughter and took her out to a cafe where she asked me to quiz her about the Olympics. As I could not really recall the names of most of the Olympics team ["that cycling bloke", "the woman from east London who runs fast", "swimmer girl" etc] we didn’t get very far. In fact, I think I started referring rather too enthusiastically to past Olympics and Daley Thompson [I asked what the events were for the decathlon, kind of knowing deep down that I could only remember that they did hurdles, running and shot putting].

I also had to fill in a form for the bonkers one about SATs. The form was whether I wanted, yes or no, to go to a meeting about them next week. "Can you put down no, that I don’t want to do them?" she asked. She thinks it is optional. We had a short conversation recently for some reason or another about secondary schools. I asked what kind of school she wanted to go to. "The easy one," she said without a second of hesitation.

I have also been reading quite a few books. Living Dolls was the first and I got into a bit of an argument over that on Saturday night with someone who said it was all women’s fault because they bought into most of the pink, Barbie stuff and porn culture. The point Walter is making, though, is that all this stuff has been repackaged and sold to us in feminist, scientific, girl power and sexual liberation language, using modern language to sell tried and tested princess/whore stereotypes from way back. Then I have been reading Nurtureshock, a book which apparently changes our views on parenting, which I am finding kind of annoying because it is not changing any of my views and finally, I read an interesting review of David Willetts’ new book on baby boomers which examines issues such as how gender equality appears to have resulted in wider inequality between the classes since educational improvements have mainly affected middle class women and women graduates tend to marry male graduates and so protect their social status. It’s certainly an interesting issue to explore and shows how complex the issue of widening participation can be.